John Kay (17 June 1704 – c. 1779) was an English inventor whose most important creation was the flying shuttle, which was a key contribution to the Industrial Revolution. He is often confused with his namesake, (John Kay's essay on the two John Kays of the Industrial Revolution). who built the first "spinning frame". "who has not the slightest connection with John Kay, the inventor of the fly-shuttle" (p. 330)... "John Kay, a watchmaker, who is not for a moment to be confounded with John Kay of Bury, the undoubted inventor of the fly-shuttle" (p. 378)
Early life John Kay was born on 17 June 1704 in the Lancashire hamlet of Walmersley, just north of Bury. His yeoman farmer father, Robert, owned the "Park" estate in Walmersley, and John was born there.Lord (1903) p.86 – The Park House, pictured. Robert died before John was born, leaving Park House to his eldest son. As Robert's fifth son (out of ten children), John was bequeathed £40 (at age 21) and an education until the age of 14.Lord (1903) p.76 His mother was responsible for educating him until she remarried.
Apprenticeship He apprenticed with a hand-loom reed maker, but is said to have returned home within a month claiming to have mastered the business.Lord (1903) p.91 He designed a metal substitute for the natural reed that proved popular enough for him to sell throughout England. After travelling the country, making and fitting wire reeds, he returned to Bury and, on 29 June 1725, both he and his brother, William, married Bury women. John's wife was Anne Holte. His daughter Lettice was born in 1726, and his son Robert in 1728.Lord (1903) p. 81
In Bury he continued to design improvements to textile machinery; in 1730 he patented a cording and twisting machine for worsted.
The Flying Shuttle In 1733, he received a patent for his most revolutionary device: a "wheeled shuttle" for the hand loom.More specifically, for a "New Engine or Machine for Opening and Dressing Wool" that incorporated his flying shuttle – John Kay Biography (1704–1764). A less important portion of the same patent (British patent no. 542) describes the 'batting machine' he had invented to rid the wool of dust. The critical specification attached to the patent dated 26 May 1733 (No. 542) describes "A new invented shuttle, for the better and more exact weaving of broad cloths, broad bays, sail cloths or any other broad goods...by running on four wheels moves over the lower side of the web and spring, on a board about nine feet long... a small cord commanded by the hand of the weaver, the weaver, sitting in the middle of the loom, with great ease and expedition by a small pull at the cord casts or moves the said new invented shuttle from side to side", quoted in Mantoux (1928). It greatly accelerated weaving, by allowing the shuttle carrying the weft to be passed through the warp threads faster and over a greater width of cloth. It was designed for the broad loom, for which it saved labour over the traditional process, needing only one operator per loom (before Kay's improvements a second worker was needed to catch the shuttle). (However, the Bury town meeting called to honour John Kay in 1903 noted that the biblical shuttle was still in use at that time in India, where two people often still worked a single loom —though mill production was flourishing there.)
Kay always called this invention a "wheeled shuttle", but others used the name "fly-shuttle" (and later, "flying shuttle") because of its continuous speed, especially when a young worker was using it in a narrow loom. The shuttle was described as travelling at "a speed which cannot be imagined, so great that the shuttle can only be seen like a tiny cloud which disappears the same instant."Roland de la Platière, Encyclopédie Méthodique (1785). Translation given in Mann (1931) p.470. If Roland wrote this part of the Encyclopédie Méthodique, he was writing about a shuttle he'd seen in Rouen in 1785, that would have been manufactured under Kay's supervision, or modelled after his design.
Opposition
In July 1733, Kay formed a partnership in Colchester, Essex to begin fly-shuttle manufacturing. No industrial unrest was anticipated, this being the first device of the modern era to significantly enhance productivity. But by September 1733 the Colchester weavers were so concerned for their livelihoods that they petitioned the King to stop Kay's inventions.
The flying shuttle was to create a particular imbalance by doubling weaving productivity without changing the rate at which thread could be spun, disrupting spinners and weavers alike.
Kay tried to promote the fly-shuttle in Bury, but could not convince the woollen manufacturers that it was sufficiently robust; he spent the next two years improving the technology, until it had several advantages over the device specified in the 1733 patent. This was to be one of his difficulties in the coming patent disputes.
In 1738 Kay went to Leeds, where his problem had become royalty collection (the annual licence fee was 15 Shillings per shuttle). He continued to invent, patenting some machines in the same year, though these were not taken up industrially. In 1738 Patent No. 561 was issued to Kay for a windmill for working pumps and for an improved pump-chain.
The Shuttle Club Kay (and, initially, his partners) launched numerous patent infringement lawsuits, but if any of these cases were successful, compensation was below the cost of prosecution. Rather than capitulate, the manufacturers formed "the Shuttle Club", a syndicate which paid the costs of any member brought to court; their strategy of patent piracy and mutual indemnification nearly bankrupted Kay.
In 1745, he and Joseph Stell patented a machine for cloth ribbon weaving, which they anticipated might be worked by water wheel, but they were unable to advance their plans because of Kay's legal costs. Impoverished and harassed, Kay was compelled to leave Leeds, and he returned to Bury.Barlow (1878) p.97 Also in 1745, John's twelfth, and final, child, William, was born.Lord (1903) p.82
Kay remained inventive; in 1746 he was working on an efficient method of salt production,Mann (1931) p.456 and designing improvements to spinning technology: but that made him unpopular among Bury spinners. Also, fly-shuttle use was becoming widespread in weaving,Mantoux (1928) says that the shuttle appears in some districts much later, and violence against the 'engine weavers' was continuing in 1760s London (pg.208). In Britain, the invention was only acknowledged to be in 'general use' by 1760, and then only for cotton, but it was standard practice much earlier. In 1747, before making any offers to Kay, the French Government inquired in London about the shuttles' uptake, and were assured that "no one uses anything but his shuttles" Mann (1931) p.467. The impression that the "fly-shuttle" had been very widely adopted by 1746 may have been due to a confusion of this advance with another that Kay had made in 1734–1735: in the method of shuttle bobbin winding to reduce breaks. It was this simpler step that was first widely copied and became known as "Kay's shuttle"; this improved, non-wheeled shuttle was in (dubiously legal) general use throughout Lancashire and Yorkshire by 1737, and also substantially increased productivity see: Mann (1931) p.467-468. increasing cotton yarn demand and its price; and Kay was blamed.
Life in France He had suffered violent treatment in England, but he did not leave the country on that account, but because of his inability to enforce (or profit from) his patent rights.Inability to enforce a patent is the reason given by Kay – Mann (1931) p. 456 Trudaine's Bureau de Commerce was known to support textile innovations (and would later actively recruit immigrant inventors). Probably encouraged by the prospect of state support,Mann (1931) p.195 proposes that the prospect of French state support attracted Kay and later inventors to France. Also, Kay's politics and religion would have been compatible (as those of Huguenot inventors like Lewis Paul probably were not). in 1747, Kay left England for France (where he had never been before, and did not speak the language).
State subsidy Kay went to Paris, and throughout 1747 negotiated with the French Government (in English) to sell them his technology. (The amount Kay demanded would be equivalent to £ at today's prices.)
Denied the huge lump sum he wanted, Kay finally agreed to 3,000 livres plus a pension of 2,500 livre, (annually from 1749) in exchange for his patent, and instruction in its use (to the manufactures of Normandy). He retained the sole rights to shuttle production in France,He did not hold the right of production in Languedoc, having sold all rights there (for 15,000 livres) before reaching agreement with the French Government in 1749. But outside of Languedoc, he retained the monopoly on legal production of fly-shuttles for use in France, see: and brought three of his sons to Paris to make them. Although wary of entering the manufacturing provinces (because of his experiences with rioting weavers in England) he was prevailed upon to do so.
At one time, the French authorities may have discouraged his communication with England,Although Kay certainly did write to the Society of Arts, and was in contact with his sons in Bury, it was thought by some in England that was unreachable; a letter published in Williamson's Liverpool Advertiser is 7 February 1766 reads "a long time ago he was obliged to decline all Correspondence with his native land as it was not agreeable to his new Masters" but Kay wrote about the unanticipated use of his technology in England to the French government: "My new shuttles are also used in England to make all sorts of narrow woollen goods, although their use could have been more perfect had the weavers consulted me".Letter in the French Archives nationales. Extract quoted p. 470 of Mann (1931) from the Paris archives range F/12 (992 à 1083: Inventions & related correspondence 1702–1830) section 993.
The beginning of mechanisation in French textile production is traditionally dated to 1753, with the widespread adoption of the flying shuttle there. Most of these new shuttles were copies, not made by the Kays. John Kay unsuccessfully tried to enforce his manufacturing monopoly, and began to quarrel with the French authorities, briefly returning to England, in 1756 (it is said that he was in his Bury home in 1753 when it was vandalised by a mob, and that he narrowly escaped with his life,According to Barlow (1878) Kay only survived this 1753 break-in because "two friends carried him away in a wool sheet" -a story given by Dickens in his weekly magazine 28 April 1860, and traced back to a 1766 letter from an unconnected party in the Williamson's Liverpool Advertiser by Mann (1931). Bennet Woodcroft's A Complete History of the Cotton Trade says he was smuggled out in a "sack of wool" (p.302). but this is probably a 19th-century tale based on earlier Colchester riots; Kay was probably in France throughout the early 1750s).Although he, or his son, wrote of an anti-"Wheel Shuttle" riot, no mention of a 1753 attack predates the 19th century and this story has probably grown out of earlier disturbances in Colchester see Mann (1931) p.456
He found his prospects in England unimproved; by 1758 he was back in France, which became his adopted country, though he was to visit England at least twice more. In the winter of 1765/66 he appealed to the Royal Society of Arts to reward him for his inventions, and exhibited his card-making machine for them. The Society could find no-one who understood the shuttle, and there was a breakdown in correspondence, so that no award was ever made. He was in England again in 1773, but returned to France in 1774 having lost his pension (at aged 70).
Old age